se to be an object of political hate, or envy, to
all. Whatever of motive the servile and time-serving might have found
in his exalted station for raising the altar of adulation, and burning the
incense of praise before him, that motive can no longer exist. The
dispenser of the patronage of an empire, the chief of this great
confederacy of States, is soon to be a private individual, stripped of all
power to reward, or to punish. His own thoughts, as he has shown us
in the concluding paragraph of that message which is to be the last of
its kind that we shall ever receive from him, are directed to that
beloved retirement from which he was drawn by the voice of millions
of freemen, and to which he now looks for that interval of repose
which age and infirmities require. Under these circumstances, he
ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of the passions, and passes into
a character for the contemplation of history. Historically, then, shall
I view him; and limiting this view to his civil administration, I